Tips for Writing Performance-based SEO?Content

Everyone thinks they’re a writer. They all took English comp in high school and wrote a book report on “To Kill a Mockingbird,” so they’re super confident in their ability to generate written content. Except there’s a whole lot more to it than that.

There are different styles of writing, and I’m not just talking about Dan Brown versus Ernest Hemingway. I mean the style of writing changes depending on its purpose.?

Journalism is generally short, to the point and hopefully factual. Sales copywriting, on the other hand, is more likely to have more adjectives and adverbs and not shy away from using phrases like “the best.”

And then there’s writing content for search engine optimization. SEO writing is challenging to a lot of people because you have to figure out how to use your target keywords in a way where it doesn’t feel like you shoehorned them in there, strictly for search engine purposes.?

But I’ve been around this industry for a bit, and I’ve picked up a few tricks of the trade that will have you writing like Neil Patel in no time. Or at least, improve the quality of your content and ideally your search ranking.?

Let me start by saying that best SEO writing comes from people who are experts in their field, understand the basics of SEO and have at least a minor talent at stringing together coherent sentences.?

If you’ve made it this far, I’m going to assume you have already achieved the last one. The first one depends on your niche, so I can’t really help here either. But the one in the middle – the basics of SEO, that’s where I can help.?

With that said, here’s my far-from-exhaustive, but still really helpful list of tips for writing content that will help your website rank higher.?

1. Always keep your keywords in mind

Before you write a single word on your website, you should have prepared a list of keywords you want to rank for.?

These should be both main keywords and secondary ones. As you’re writing, keep them at the top of mind. Personally, I usually have a list of primary (money keywords), secondary (supporting keywords), and tertiary (context based keywords) terms inside an Excel spreadsheet for each page or you can use a tool like Ryte.

And speaking of keywords, try to figure out which ones your competition is going after. You should include those in your content too.?

2. Don’t try to do too much

One of the biggest problems SEO beginners make in content creation is trying to use one page to target too many keywords. You should have one main keyword per page or blog post, or two at the most.?

The rest of the page should include variations and related words to your primary keyword. The exception to this is your homepage, which probably has a lot of content pointing to different parts of your site.?

3. Focus on search intent

It can be easy to forget that you’re not creating content for search engine spiders, but instead are targeting real, live people. Make sure your content is providing the answer to whatever they’re searching for.?

Keyword volume is important, but search intent should always be your number one priority when creating new content.?

Pro tip: To get a better understanding of your user's intent, check out the keyword intent report and the SERP Features report inside SEMRush. SERP features are textual and visual methods of catering to a user's intent.

4. Titles are important

Your target keyword should be part of your page title, preferably near the beginning. Also remember you have limited real estate for titles, so keep them to roughly a? 60-character limit.?

On the flip side, actually say something with your title. “10 Tips for Building a Sandcastle” is much better than simply “Sandcastles,” or even “Building Sandcastles.” Specifics tend to pique interest.

5. Writing is rewriting

No matter what anyone tells you, nothing was written perfectly on the first pass. Without even realizing it, it’s easy to omit a word, use the wrong tense or make some other silly mistake. Rewriting is important, especially in SEO.

When you revise your web content, you’ll begin to identify new areas where you can add keywords, add related phrases or structure things for more clarity.

6. Use subheads

Breaking your content into digestible chunks not only makes it easier to read, but it gives you more opportunities to include your keywords.?

You’re killing two birds with one stone – making your content more user-friendly, which is important to Google, and packing more key phrases into it.?

7. Don’t be afraid to suck

Natural talents are a blessing. If you weren’t lucky enough to be smiled upon by the muse of poetry as a baby, writing may not be one of yours. Don’t worry. Everyone has to start somewhere.?

And if you haven’t done SEO writing before, there’s a good chance your first few tries aren’t going to be great. Don’t worry, you’ll get better. In fact, every time you write a new blog post or landing page, you’ll be a little better than the time before.?

Now, let's wrap this up

Your keywords will fit in a little more smoothly, your ideas will be conveyed more clearly and it will start to rank higher. Practice makes perfect.?

At the very root of things, content is the single most important thing to search engine optimization. If you have good content that people find valuable, your ranking will reflect that. If you don’t it will reflect that too.

Just understand that it takes a bit of work and practice to create the kind of stuff that’s really worthwhile. And that means practice.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for a way to streamline SEO and get better results, you should talk to me about evisio seo software . Contact me today for a free trial.?

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